Red Phone Box Cellphone Puts the 'Heresy' in Heritage

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Red Phone Box Cellphone Puts the 'Heresy' in Heritage

When British Telecom started tearing down the Great British Red Telephone boxes and replacing them with more efficient but characterless steel and glass booths, there was an outcry. But, being England, it was a peculiarly quiet outcry, consisting of much tutting and shaking of heads. Nobody did much to save these expensive-to-maintain public toilets, and they ended up as novelty phone booths in night clubs, or just abandoned by the score, left to rust in fields.

The “London Calling” (ho ho) mobile phone seeks to bring back the prestigious red telephone box by turning it into a tacky plastic novelty toy. In comparison to the original it is as classy as a plaster model of Big Ben. Inside, it performs like any commodity, free-with-contract cellphone: camera, color screen and not much else. The “fun” begins with the ringtones: God Save the Queen is rendered in polyphonic glory, as is Rule Britannia. Ugh. The phone also comes pre-loaded with photos of British landmarks, although just which one made the cut we don’t know. We assume that Watford Parade on a Saturday night was skipped over.

This is a monstrosity. Perhaps we should also be making a car in the shape of a parking garage? The phone is listed as “Currently Unobtainable”. That, for anyone who has used the unreliable BT boxes, is most accurate part of this parody. £86 ($141).